ABSTRACT
Hugo Chavez Frias gazed intently at the chief officer of Venezuela's Supreme Court as the former paratrooper repeated the oath that made him Venezuela's ninth consecutively elected democratic president. The financial, physical, and economic milieu in which Venezuelans found themselves at the end of the twentieth century supported Hugo Chavez's characterization of Venezuela's post-1958 democratic elites as Hood Robins. Venezuelan democratic leaders supported the United States during the Cold War, even though they grew anxious when Washington flashed military power in pursuit of its economic and security interests in the Caribbean. Large numbers of people with strong Amerindian and black ancestry have become leaders in politics, business, and culture. Political and economic elites struggled to cope with the new demands placed on the old organization by the country's gradual integration into international commerce. The petroleum-based "technological imperium" was arguably the single most important factor shaping twentieth-century political development.
